rhetoric

Despite claims to the contrary, no. Let’s roll the tape on a further expose of the type of rhetoric we are facing. (And no, as is now usual, KS did not respond to the point by point refutation and correction of his argument. Which, sadly, speaks volumes on the underlying mindset.) Clipping, 221 in the HeKS suggests a way forward thread: _____________ >>WJM, 194: >>William J MurrayNovember 19, 2014 at 8:37 pm Adapa said: You made the stupid demand that I prove a negative – that random genetic variations aren’t caused by invisible pixies and that natural selection isn’t caused by 27th dimension space aliens. I’ve only asked you to support your own assertion. If your assertion includes an unsupportable Read More ›

One of the rhetorical gambits we are currently encountering is an attempt to drive a wedge between Dembski’s use of “Specified Complexity” and Orgel’s.  Accordingly, I noted as below at 83 in VJT’s CSI thread: _____________ >> I have always emphasised functionally specific complex organisation and associated information, FSCO/I, which is what is directly relevant to the world of life, and is pretty directly observable, starting with text and technology. When objectors can bring themselves to acknowledge that observable phenomenon ant the linked constraint on possible configurations imposed by interactions required to produce functionality, then we can begin to analyse soundly. Orgel actually spoke in the direct context of biofunction, and Wicken used the term, as well as identifying that wiring Read More ›

One of the currently popular objections to the concept of functionally specific complex organisation and associated information (FSCO/I) and its super-set Complex Specified Information (CSI) is that these are unscientific ill-founded, logically circular concepts. The objection is actually goundless but it is easy to lose sight of the true balance on the merits in the midst of the spark, flash and smoke of rhetoric.  Accordingly it is reasonable to set them in the context of general and scientific inductive reasoning, and its factual basis. I therefore recently set out some of that context in summary in VJT’s thread on seeking agreement on CSI, at no 7. Clipping, with adjustments and figures added: _______________ >> It seems to me that there Read More ›

New Contributor HeKS, has had occasion to comment a few hours ago on KS’ claimed bomb argument (cf. my own headlined for record response here, WJM’s here and here,  VJT’s here,   BA’s Black Knight Taunt summing up here and other responses at UD . . . KS’s  repeated boasts that he has not been answered are groundless).  I think his comment is worth headlining as a pivot for discussion on the issue and on what has been happening rhetorically: ______________ HeKS: >> In this thread, I noticed Keiths posting a summary of his supposed ‘bomb’ argument. I haven’t been around much lately and haven’t seen too much of the discussion around his argument that has apparently been taking place, but Read More ›

A week ago, VJT put up a useful set of excerpts from Axe’s 2010 paper on proteins and barriers they pose to Darwinian, blind watchmaker thesis evolution. During onward discussions, it proved useful to focus on some excerpts where Axe spoke to some numerical considerations and the linked idea of islands of specific function deeply isolated in AA sequence and protein fold domain space, though he did not use those exact terms. I think it worth the while to headline the clips, for reference (instead of leaving them deep in a discussion thread): _________________ ABSTRACT: >> Four decades ago, several scientists suggested that the impossibility of any evolutionary process sampling anything but a miniscule fraction of the possible protein sequences Read More ›

One of the favourite tactics of hyperskepticism is to brazenly dismiss what is objected to as a myth, misconcept or word magic, etc; even while in the real world, one must deal with it day by day as blatant reality. Oops. This has been happening with FSCO/I and linked concepts such as dFSCI. As a simple example of the undeniable reality of functionally specific complex organisation that depends on proper arrangement of parts according to a wiring diagram (which is informational) to achieve function, I again bring to the table a classic, the Abu-Garcia 6500 C3 mag reel, with its exploded view “wiring” diagram: The need for proper functionally specific information rich organisation of correct parts to get it to Read More ›

From recent “challenges” by KS as a representative of a certain line of design objection thought, we find various unfortunate examples of a type of objection that pivots on a deep misunderstanding and/or misrepresentation of the design inference, empirical evidence based inductive reasoning process.One that even more regrettably, seems strongly resistant to correction on evidence and reason; raising questions of the fallacy of the closed mind. A representative example (cf. my clip- respond- on- points here)  is the following distortion of Newton’s thought on Gravitation as both scientist and design-oriented, theistic philosophical thinker in his own right: Bob and another friend, an astronomer, observe the positions of the planets over several years. They determine that the planets are moving in Read More ›

Keith brought in an argument he claimed to be a “bomb” for ID. It turned out to be a failed suicide mission where the only person that got blown up was Keith. (Please note: I am assuming that life patterns exists in an ONH, as Keith claims, for the sake of this argument only.  Also, there are many other, different take-downs of Keith’s “bomb” argument already on the table.  Indulge me while I present another here.) In my prior OP, I pointed out that Keith had made no case that nature was limited to producing only ONH’s when it comes to biological diversity, while his whole argument depended on it.  He has yet to make that case, and has not Read More ›

In recent exchanges  in and around UD on origins and the tree of life, Theobald’s 29 evidences claims (and by implication the sort of summary presented by Wikipedia in its articles on Abiogenesis and Evolution) have come up. [NB: to carry forward discussions, I suggest here on. I intend to do a for reference in support of discussion here in this FTR post.] That leads me to point out the case of the UD pro-darwinism essay challenge and the strange absence of and reluctance to provide a guest essay here at UD over the course of a full year, Sept/Oct 2012 – Sept/Oct 2013. The big issue seemed to be that in my challenge as explained, I required tackling the Read More ›

In the face of confusing, accusatory, polarising and dismissive rhetoric emanating from all too many objectors to design thought in our day, it is useful to put on record the core design view and the pivotal design inference as a marker for reasonable discussion. That is, a key current task is to clear the air of obfuscating, polarising, ill informed and/or confusing or misleading and/or manipulative polarising rhetoric projected by objectors to modern design thought. First, the modern, scientific design view can be reasonably summarised in words from the NWE article on Intelligent Design: Intelligent design (ID) is the view that it is possible to infer from empirical evidence that “certain features of the universe and of living things are Read More ›

Islands of function in a space of configurations, of course, are used as a metaphor for special zones T, which has been visualised at UD as follows, based on the underlying Mathematics of phase spaces and configuration spaces, using among other inputs, Dembski’s remarks in his No Free Lunch: U/D: A way to visualise the search challenge on the gamut of our solar system: A good way to visualise what is happening in physical, ordinary 3-d space as we inject functionally specific complex organisation and associated information would be to take a pile of lego bricks: . . . and contrast it with the functional organisation of a lego brick castle: . . . or that of the “exploded view” Read More ›

2350 years ago, in The Laws, Bk X, Plato gave a sobering warning on the morally and socially corrosive nature of evolutionary materialism and resulting ideologised factions (and by extension, enabling fellow travellers) that the past few days here at UD, sadly, bring back to mind:  >>Ath. . . .[The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [i.e the classical “material” elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art . . . [such that] all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as Read More ›

I was just challenged to reply to the KS “bomb” claim, and though I am busy, I will pause to note briefly, and will link this FYI-FTR to the thread of discussion where the challenge was made. I think WJM, in his post on the failure of the bomb, ably put his finger on the first main failure: Ultimately, keiths asks the question of IDists (to paraphrase) – “why did the designer pick just one form of life and utilize just one lineage, when it could have utilized any number of alternate, non-nested systems?” – yet, keiths fails to ask the same question of the natural forces argument – why just one form of life, why one lineage, why one Read More ›

. . . and blatant denial is not an appropriate response to the reality of and/or easily known facts concerning functionally specific complex organisation and /or associated information, FSCO/I: Facts are stubborn things, but people can be more stubborn than that. (That is, there are two types of ignorance, I: simple ignorance because one does not know the facts and/or may not understand them, but also II: ideological closed-mindedness due to being controlled by mind-closing agendas hostile to, selectively hyperskeptical towards and dismissive or suppressive of inconvenient facts, . . . such as those we just saw regarding FSCO/I.) Why am I saying this? Poster-boy no 1, rich @ 252  in the UD no bomb thread: [KF:] “Your comment no Read More ›

There is a current wave of attempts in an around UD to cloud, strawmannise, obfuscate, twist into pretzels and dismiss the observed (and measurable) phenomenon, functionally specific, complex organisation and/or associated information, FSCO/I. Accordingly, let us first note the root of the concept in the work of leading OOL — origin of life — researchers in the 1970’s: ORGEL, 1973:  . . . In brief, living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals are usually taken as the prototypes of simple well-specified structures, because they consist of a very large number of identical molecules packed together in a uniform way. Lumps of granite or random mixtures of polymers are examples of structures that are complex but not specified. The Read More ›